Would You Like to Be Instantly Smarter?

Here's a scientifically proven way to make your home office smarter and by extension, make yourself smarter.

Ready? Get a plant. Put it nearby. Keep it alive. Pretty simple, but truthfully, effective.

The main benefits of plants seem to do with cognition and retention of information. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences conducted a "Reading Span" test to see how well office workers in performed in remembering information in rooms with plants and rooms without.

Here's an excerpt from their findings:

To test their hypothesis that plants in an office setting would lead to benefits, the authors placed some participants in an office with four plants placed around a desk, and others in the same room without plants. ... Results of the experiment showed that the participants working in the room with plants improved their performance from the first to the second Reading Span Task, while those in the room without plants did not.

In addition to the reading retention results, the researchers also found that offices with plants reported a reduction in fatigue during demanding work. It's spring, so I'll be getting some plants and maybe getting a wee bit smarter too.